


No One Is Ever Told What Would Have Happened

by J (j_writes)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of a long hallway, at the top of a staircase on an island somewhere to the east of Narnia, there lies a book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Is Ever Told What Would Have Happened

**Author's Note:**

> written for Yuletide 2007.

_How to remember things forgotten_

At the end of a long hallway, at the top of a staircase on an island somewhere to the east of Narnia, there lies a book.

It is a book of magic, and if it could speak it would tell a thousand tales of the spells it has cast, the lives it has changed. It once belonged to a great Magician, and though he has long since departed, his book remains, sitting on a table and waiting for the day when it will be opened again.

Sometimes, in her mind, Lucy goes to that island.

She closes her eyes and she whispers the one spell she remembers, the spell that will allow her to see all of the rest. When she opens them she is once again in front of the table, her hands small and young as they reach out to turn each of the pages, searching for the words she needs to say.

Her voice, when she speaks, is a sound she has not heard in a long time, but when she opens her eyes again she is always back where she started, taller and older and not necessarily wiser.

 

 _How to forget things you want to forget_

Caspian was standing by the rail when she found him, staring down into the water with such a desperate blankness in his eyes that it scared her. She stood beside him and touched his hand, and when he looked up at her, he gazed at her for a long time until something of his old self had returned.

"What do you think you'll find?" he finally asked. "At the end of the world."

"I don't know," she said. "I imagine it will be something that doesn't translate well into words, or I'd promise to tell you about it."

"If we see each other again," he said, looking out at the sky.

She looked down at her hand, still resting atop his on the rail. "Yes," she agreed. "If that."

It was easy to kiss him, easier then she'd expected. She rose up on her tiptoes and pressed their lips together, warm and still sweet from the water. Their hands, still tangled together, stayed clasped between them, and when she pulled back, he took his hand away, looking at it as if it no longer belonged to his body.

"I don't…" he finally said, and she smiled sadly.

"I know," she told him, reaching out to touch his arm one final time. Then she left him standing there alone against the railing while she went belowdecks and wept a few bitter tears where no one could see her.

When her eyes were dry, she closed them and remembered the book on the Magician's island for the first time, turning each page in her mind until she found the one she was looking for.

By the time she left the ship, she had forgotten, and couldn't understand why Caspian looked so pained as he leaned down to kiss her cheek in farewell.

 

 _How to tell whether anyone was speaking the truth_

She dated one boy as she was growing up, a sweet boy from her classes who carried her books for her and made her smile.

He told her he loved her one evening, sitting together outside and watching the stars, and she kissed his flushed cheek and didn't reply. She lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if he'd meant it, if it was even possible to lie about such a thing.

She thought of the island for the first time in years, imagined her feet against the staircase, her fingers against the rough old pages. She imagined, but she didn't _see_ , and when she opened the book, its pages were blank, writing existing only in tiny smudged patches that she couldn't decipher.

She tried again, and again, over and over until tears were coming silently from her eyes, but though she could see the hallway in her mind, and she walked the steps she'd walked so many times before, each time when she opened the book the writing was in a language she didn't know, or so broken up by empty spots that she couldn't read it at all.

This was how she learned that the magic did not work outside of Narnia.

 

 _How to produce enchanted sleeps_

Peter didn't sleep when they returned to Narnia.

He sat awake at night, sometimes talking with whoever would sit up with him, sometimes just looking out at the country, and Lucy worried for him, because each morning she would wake to find him looking sadder and less like himself than the day before.

"There's not supposed to be any sadness here," she reminded him, and his lips twisted into something that would have been a smile in the past, but wasn't anymore.

"I'm beginning to forget her," he said, his fingers touching the edge of the horn he kept at his side.

"You won't forget," Lucy told him. "I won't let you." She sat up with him all that night, and they told each other stories about Susan until dawn was just peeking over the horizon. Then Lucy put her hand on Peter's shoulder and, drawing upon the book in her memory, sent him into a deep healing sleep.

"Rest," she told him. "We're finally home."

She watched him dreaming, and continued telling stories to his sleeping form in the darkness, some of them about their early adventures in Narnia, some about their lives in England, all of them stories about the four of them together. She stayed awake and remembered for him while his face gradually returned to what it had been when they arrived here, young and healthy and peaceful.

When she finally retired to her own bed, she left a piece of paper on the table in his room, a spell scribbled upon it, with _how to remember things forgotten_ written across the top, wanting to share a little of her magic with him.

When she woke later that evening, she could no longer remember the island.


End file.
